According to the survey, 78 percent of likely voters polled had positive views of the way that the president has handled the “super storm” – a number that includes two-thirds of Romney’s supporters. In contrast, just 44 percent of those surveyed had a net positive view of how the Republican candidate responded to the storm.

The chart below breaks down those results:

It is too early to tell, however, if that support for Obama will affect his overall standing in the race. The results of the four-day tracking survey include only one night of interviews with voters after the storm hit, so we will have to wait for Thursday and Friday’s results to see if the storm has any real effect on the dynamics of the presidential race.

Overall, Obama and Romney are tied, 49% to 49%, among likely voters. Those numbers are consistent with the rest of the poll’s results, which have shown the race between one point since daily tracking began on October 18.

Apple is all too used to the rumor cycle affecting its sales: the company just saw a dip in sequential iPhone shipments this spring as customers waited for what would ultimately become the iPhone 5. If you believe ComScore’s US smartphone market share estimates, though, Apple wasn’t the worse for wear this August. While the iPhone was in the doldrums this spring, it jumped almost a whole point versus an already positive July to hit 34.3 percent; we’re wondering if last-minute discounts played a part in keeping iPhone 4S sales healthy. Google didn’t have much to fear and saw Android climb to 52.6 percent, even if its ascent wasn’t as rapid as that of its Bay Area neighbor. RIM took the brunt of the losses and dipped to just 83 percent of the market in what’s increasingly a two-horse race, although Microsoft’s Windows Phone held its ground at 3.6 percent.

The wider US cellphone market tells a familiar story, with Samsung on top. There’s signs that the narrative is very close to changing, however: LG and Apple are now close enough, at one point’s difference, that Apple could seize second place by the time we see ComScore’s figures for September. Before interpreting Apple’s performance as some sign of a wider reversa! l of for tune, just remember that most of its challenges are on the world stage. There’s no guarantee that the Android-focused markets beyond American borders have been as receptive to iPhone price drops and updates.

Beijing Jingdong sparked the latest price war last month after Chief Executive Liu Qiangdong said on his microblogging site that he would dispatch 5,000 agents to check prices at rival outlets and would undercut their prices at least 10%. Suning and Gome responded by agreeing to offer consumers lower prices on the companies’ e-commerce sites.

But then the competing offers spread to Chinese social media and snowballed to the point where companies were apparently unable to offer stated discounts and ran out of items, sparking widespread anger.

China has many consumers, but not much in the way of consumer protection. Pressure on these retailers from slumping demand and rising inflation mean they occasionally resort to dubious pricing practices.

It’s a sign what’s at times still an awkward hybrid economy, even as China moves towards surpassing the United States as the world’s largest economy.

Rapidly changing prices are becoming an inevitable part of online retail. Combining that with brick and mortar outlets and the sheer size of China’s burgeoning consumer class created a complete disaster.

Hey, uh, Olympics spectators? Really glad you made it out and all, totally appreciate the support and money you spent on those tickets and the fact that you painted those little flags on your faces. All of that’s great, seriously. But it turns out you’re also tweeting so much that it’s interfering with our event broadcasts. So knock it off. Please.

That’s the basic message from the International Olympic Committee, which Reuters reports has asked viewers of outdoor races to cool it a little with with social media. The reason? A surge of tweets during yesterday’s cycling road race made competent television coverage nearly impossible:

Commentators on Saturday’s men’s cycling road race were unable to tell viewers how far the leaders were ahead of the chasing pack because data could not get through from the GPS satellite navigation system travelling with the cyclists.

Organizers fear the same fate awaits the men’s and women’s marathon and the triathlon, unless live viewers refrain themselves from tweeting unless it’s “urgent,” which honestly there’s no such thing as an urgent tweet, right? That’s silly.

Anyways! The most likely outcome is that people will continue to tweet, and signals will continue to take a hit, and we’ll all continue to have a good laugh about how far behind our infrastructure is from where we need it to be in an age of real-time everything. [Reuters]

According to social media sharing and measurement company AddThis, the Chobani Champions campaign is currently winning the race online for most effective campaign amongst the official Olympic partners.

Over the course of a three-day period (July 19-July 22) AddThis measured mentions on social networks, articles and Twitter followers and determined the Greek yogurt brand is proving to have the greatest reach.

Chobani’s campaign features noted softball player Jennie Finch.

Rounding out the top five were United Airlines, Visa, Omega, and McDonald’s. According to AddThis—which claims to monitor more than 14 million websites and 1.3 billion users—McDonald’s is doing particularly well on Twitter.

Since its IPO earlier this month, Facebook has wasted no time in expanding its empire — it’s already purchased the Karma mobile gifting service and launched a standalone camera app — and talk about the social network’s next steps doesn’t seem to be quieting down. The latest rumor, from Pocket Lint, says Facebook is looking to buy the Opera browser as part of its larger effort to compete against Google, Mozilla and other internet mammoths. According to a source at Opera Software who spoke with Pocket Lint, the company is shopping around for potential buyers and has even imposed a hiring freeze. While it’s not too hard to believe that Facebook is readying its horse to enter the browser race, this rumor is just that: a rumor. But given the social network’s tendency to whip out new features at warp speed, we should have something more solid than speculation soon — if the Opera purchase story has any legs, that is.

What are AdChoices?

The AdChoices icon appears on sites that use Google’s AdSense program to show ads. While Google often shows you ads based on the content of the page you are viewing, we also show some ads based on the types of websites you visit, view, or where you interact with an ad or other Google product supported by Google’s advertising services. In doing this, Google doesn’t know your name or any other personal information about you. Google simply recognizes the number stored in your browser on the DoubleClick cookie, and shows ads related to the interest and inferred demographic categories associated with that cookie. It’s our goal to make these ads as relevant and useful as possible for you. Google doesn’t create categories, or show ads, based on sensitive topics such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health.

Where can I learn more about how Google protects privacy?

To learn more about how we collect and use information at Google, please visit our Privacy Center

What choices do I have about advertising from Google?

Google lets you edit the categories associated with your browser, or opt out of personalized advertising, through Google’s Ads Preferences Manager.

Google may use your Google account information, such as items you +1 on Google properties and across the web, to personalize content and ads on non-Google websites. If you’d like to control how you see +1 recommendations from people you know, and how your +1 recommendations are shown to others, please visit the +1 button account setting page.

Learn More!

Learn more about online advertising from the Network Advertising Initiative.

Find more on browser controls and plug-in tools to help set and maintain your privacy choices.

According to the latest research from the NPD group, Apple has got its second wind in smartphone sales. In the same quarter that saw the iPhone 4S reinvent the wheel obey our every vocal whim, the trio of available models soaked up a total of 43 percent of the US smartphone market in Q4 2012, apparently knawing away at Android’s market share of 53 percent held during the rest of 2011. However, Google’s mobile OS appears to be the debutante smartphone of choice, cornering 57 percent of new purchases, with 34 percent going for Apple. The remaining 9 percent is distributed between the smartphone also-rans, with the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry languishing in that anonymous grey bar at the top. The top five handsets from NPD’s Mobile Phone Track service is an Apple and Samsung love-in, with iOS devices claiming the three top spots, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S II (we assume collectively) and the Galaxy S 4G. NPD’s blow-by-blow commentary on this increasingly two-horse race awaits below.

But it didn’t even show up in the Ace Metrix Top 10. Ace Metrix measures a panel of 500 consumers who watch ads and rate them for effectiveness. That research says Doritos’ sling baby ad won the night.

It was also a big night for dogs. Volkswagen’s much anticipated follow-up to its little Darth Vader spot from last year used an obese dog getting in shape to gets its revenge on a VW it wanted to chase down the street (and then somehow ended up in the Star Wars cantina scene).

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.